HarvestChoice began in 2006, when the tides were rapidly turning on the data science. Detailed figures on agriculture, human welfare, and the environment were scarce for Africa South of the Sahara (SSA). Statistics to support agricultural policy and investment decisions in the region were often too coarse – available only at national scale. Since then, technology advances (e.g., remote sensing, geographic information systems, crowd-sourcing, and modeling tools) have enabled rapid data generation.
For supporting policy and strategic investment decision makings, data products need to be well documented with meaningful meta data, ground-truthed, well-focused, flexible, and consistent, as well as timely and geographically relevant for multiple users and for multiple scenarios. Cross-disciplinary data, for example from socio-economics and the natural sciences, must be interoperable and, ideally, spatialized, if we are to capture the complexity of agriculture, people and place. To this end, HarvestChoice’s primary goal was to spearhead the development of new, standardized, spatially-explicit data layers relevant for SSA agriculture, harmonized from multiple data sources – which included rescuing and repurposing statistical data from previously inaccessible formats. A second goal of HarvestChoice was to make sense of these data and help inform strategic decisions regarding technical change in SSA agriculture. To do this, HarvestChoice developed suites of tools both to enable data users to explore, summarize, and visualize our core datasets and to draw on these data to conduct bio-economic analyses in support of decision making in SSA agriculture. More than 300 published journal articles were found to use HarvestChoice’s data as the basis of study.
In addition to its data products, in partnership with the University of Minnesota and other key collaborators, HarvestChoice delivered a collection of flagship knowledge and analysis products – including new (bio-economic) models, data documentation, analyses, and an extensive series of on-line and written reports and policy digests. These knowledge products are clustered around the core theme of Realizing the Potential of African Agriculture. Most of this work focused on the spatial dimension of African agriculture, with emphasis on the bio-economy of agricultural production. Many of the policy- and investment-focused analyses draw insights from a unique juxtaposition of the carefully harmonized, spatially-explicit data assets developed by HarvestChoice and its partners. These studies will be continue published and made available from the [Publications] section of this page below.
Outputs / Resources
Jawoo Koo
Senior Research Fellow
Jawoo Koo
Senior Research FellowCarlo Azzarri
Senior Research FellowLiangzhi You
Senior Research FellowUlrike Wood-Sichra
Senior Research AnalystZhe Guo
Senior GIS Coordinator
How does climate change affect poor people in Africa?
Climate and poverty in Africa South of the Sahara
To diversify or not to diversify, that is the question. Pursuing agricultural development for smallholder farmers in marginal areas of Ghana
Pixelating crop production: Consequences of methodological choices
A suite of global accessibility indicators
Hunger, nutrition, and precipitation: Evidence from Ghana and Bangladesh
HarvestChoice: Supporting strategic investment choices in agricultural technology development and adoption
Implications of wide-scale cropland restoration: A crucial element of the forest landscape restoration approach
Cropland restoration as an essential component to the forest landscape restoration approach - Global effects of widescale adoption
Open Access and Open Data at CGIAR: Challenges and solutions
Data Africa
Spatial production allocation model (SPAM) 2005: Technical documentation
- IFPRI Program/Country Event -
Technologies, Platforms and Partnerships in support of the African agricultural science agenda
- IFPRI Program/Country Event -
Round 2 Technology Assessments and Platforms: Tools and Reach in Africa
- IFPRI Program/Country Event -
Technology Assessments and Platforms: Tools and Reach in Africa
- Series/Special Event -
Third Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development